Cooking in Chiang Mai

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As I am a bit wary of tourist traps, I wasn't expecting much from the cooking course I had booked but I was to be mistaken.. it was a fantastic day, I met loads of fun people and the course was great. Very hands-on, we all cooked our own meals and the teacher, called Nice (yes, as in nice!), was very friendly, fun and energetic.

The Thai Farm Cooking School is 17km outside of Chiang Mai, which is a blessing, as that means you spend all day at this lovely organic farm in very calm surroundings. They pick you up from your hotel and bring you back and it goes all day from 9am to 5pm. It is not listed in Lonely Planet yet but it definitely deserves it. There were 28 pupils there today, seperated in 3 classes which was perfect.

Check out http://www.thaifarmcooking.com/ for all contact details, I can only recommend it!

Back to my day :-) In my class there were Australians, Americans and one girl from Holland whom I palled up with quickly. We had a fun day, especially after we discovered are common passion for all Apple products ;-) We decided that travelling would definitely be more fun with a small Apple laptop to download pics, fill the iPod and do wireless email. Is that decadent?

The cooking was really fun and I learnt alot. I won't always be able to get all the ingredients at home but we cooked all the staple Thai dishes like Sticky Rice with Mango (yes!!), my all-time favourite Papaya Salad, Red Curry and Fried Noodles with Egg. We discussed the hand pounder versus electical blender theme at length and I definitely believe the working woman can go for the blender ;-)

After a lengthy lunch we did the last two dishes and drove back to Chiang Mai, a lovely ride through the countryside which I liked a lot not having had time to do any trekking outside of the city. Maybe a next trip? Many are reporting very positive things about Laos, it sounds very interesting and would be a lovely combination with Northern Thailand.

This was my last day in Chiang Mai, it was a fun city, definitely too much traffic, but worth a longer stay. Tomorrow I will be flying to Siem Reap in Cambodia to visit the Angkor Wat ruins, back on the web on Thursday.

Bye for now...

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Photos

My Vegetarian Thai Menu
My Red Curry, Stir-Fried Veggies with Cashew Nuts, Jasmine Rice and Papaya Salad. It tasted devine!!

The Local Market
This was definitely the cleanest market I have seen until now, it was outside town. Here Nice explained the different rice and chilli types aswell as the local vegetables.

Chillies
Interesting that they used dried chillis for the paste instead of fresh ones..

Fish
Lovely cooked food at the market too..

Red Curry Paste
It was hard work but definitely worth it! Exactly the right hotness and loads of garlic!

Thai Farm Cooking School
At this organic farm they have the cooking school and grow the herbs and quite a few fruit and vegetables themselves.

Green Papayas
These are one of the things we don't get at home (I don't think!). But in one restaurant in Bangkok I had a lovely spicy apple-carrot salad so it will be easy to adapt to our local ingredients.

My New Dutch Friend
We had a good laugh all day and had a drink in Chiang Mai afterwards, see you again in Maastricht maybe!

Trip Back to Town
Rice Fields and palm trees all the way.